Pandoc extends standard markdown syntax with footnotes,
embedded LaTeX, definition lists, tables, and other
features. A compatibility mode is provided for those
who need a drop-in replacement for Markdown.pl.

In contrast to existing tools for converting markdown
to HTML, which use regex substitutions, pandoc has
a modular design: it consists of a set of readers,
which parse text in a given format and produce a native
representation of the document, and a set of writers,
which convert this native representation into a target
format. Thus, adding an input or output format requires
only adding a reader or writer.